Monday, November 17, 2014

Staunton, November 17 – Many have
been troubled by policies of the Moscow Patriarchate that are inconsistent with
the Christian tradition, but now Alfred Kokh, a former Russian vice prime
minister, says that the Russian Church has moved so far away from Christianity
that it has transformed itself into an independent religion.

“In this cult,”
he said, “human sacrifice again has returned as a means of supporting the
divine state and an essentially pagan view of the supernatural qualities of the
servants of the cult has arisen. In it, there is no place for Christian mercy
and humility; instead, pitilessness to enemies and hypocrisy as the highest
form of the human spirit are cultivated.”

The
caesaro-papist understanding of Orthodoxy and its close links to the state have
frequently opened Orthodoxy in general and the Moscow Patriarchate in
particular to charges that it has sacrificed this or that provision of
Christian teaching in order to serve the current powers that be.

But Kokh’s
suggestion that what the Moscow Patriarchate is offering is not Christianity at
all takes that argument a step further. It is certain to spark a new round of
discussions about the Russian church and where Patriarch Kirill is taking it,
with its defenders rejecting Kokh’s views out of hand but others raising more
questions about the nature of that church today.